Among many as-of-yet-undetermined admittance requirements, one stands out:

Each citizen must provide five books to the public library.

Giving credit where credit is due, I am obviously not the first person to hypothesis what books one would desire on an island. Specifically, I am indebted to The Christian Humanist Podcast episode 66: Desert Island Books, which challenged listeners to pick five books to take with them on a desert island. As with most hypothetical games of this nature, there are a few ground rules:

1. The Bible is given

If you so desire you may have any version/language/translation

I’ll alter this somewhat to allow your own preferred religious text

2. Anything you can find in a single volume counts

This means books must be physical copies!

3. The library is communal, meaning that we all share our books.

There’s no need to repeat a given work.

4. This is the only way our library will be stocked.

Using the host choices from said podcast, our library currently contains

I would bring Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
The Tender Bar by JR Moehringer
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Their Eyes were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston